PONDERING

Joel Weishaus

Around 300 million years ago, Tiktaalik emerged from a primeval pond, took a few breaths of oxygenated air, slithered across the muddy earth, and began the long, continuing evolution toward a world in which "humanity poetically dwells."(2) Around 50,000 years ago, our Cro magnon ancestors drew images and blew colors onto subterranean walls and on terranean rocks, recreating animals they knew, or imagined, as symbols and signs, and leaving their handprints as signatures of I Was Here.(3) Around 2,500 years ago a few pre-Socratic Greeks thought deeply and came up with Philosophy: the love of wisdom. A few of these philosophers were poets, whose "bright tatters of wisdom cast / over gray welter and spume should at any rate yield / a few visions and reflections."(4) In fact, "Without poets there is no philosophy." (5) Among the Greek gods was Orpheus, whose singing head floated down the River Hebrus to Lesbos, the island of poets, where he established his oracle. Since then, every significant poem has, in some sense, been Orphean. Three famous ponds in Human Cultural History are: the pond in Matsuo Basho''s poem: Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizo no oto (6), and in the pond in Henry Thoreau's book Walden. While Walden Pond has become a tourist destination, Basho's pond remains a koan, an enlightened mind inscribed "as a timeless endless pond."(7) The third pond is Claude Monet's watergarden at Giverny where, inspired by prints of Japanese gardens, he created The Nymphéas (Water Lilies) cycle, in whose more than 250 paintings "light becomes what it touches / becomes water, lilies on water, / above and below water..." (8)   1. Matthew Johnson, Senior Planner / Community Development. City of Forest Grove OR. 2. Martin Heidegger quoting Friedrich Hölderlin. 3. Alison George, "The Cave Art Conundrum." New Scientist, July 2021. 4. Robert Bringhurst. From, "Herakleitos." 5. Hans-Georg Gadamer. Radical Philosophy 69 Jan / Feb 1995. 6. There are many translations, including: Old pond / a frog leaps in / plop! 7. Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave. New York: Weatherhill, 1996. 8. Lisel Muller. From, "Monet Refuses the Operation." Designed to be viewed on a 10" or larger screen.     TITLES / NOTES (LINKS)   On A Cold Autumn Dawning Sweet Scent Of Autumn Shadows On A Parallel Road To The River When Earth Was Young From A Secluded Lake Unlike Walden And Its Famous Hermit This Old Pond Dreams It's Dancing Like A Pond That Can't Be As The Sun Rises The Shadows The Pond Stretches Into The Night Even Though It Knows Quacking In His Scarlet Cap And Gossamer Grass Wears The Crystals Every Pond Has Dreamed When We Walked On The Shards Scanning Water Trudging Through A Dense Fog Slips Over The Pond The Pond Flows In Around And Out On The Mountain's Lips A God When We Find That In The Beginning In His Giverny Studios Monet Painted What Have You Birthed A Second Time The Mountain Lifts As Memory In The Morning’s Sward Gray Sky Wingless Flight Rising In Starlight As His Singing Head Floated Down Some Walls Of Paleolithic Caves A Slice Of Sunshine Slides Its Way Entering Again A Cavernous Mind Black Clouds Of An Ancient Dawning When Orpheus Sang His Song Of Creation In The Corner Of A Fathomless Universe Henry Sat In His Small Room Grinning The Trees Look Like Tall Monks Robed In His Endless Quest For Zero Monet Would Fill His Pond With Water Orpheus Drifts Down The Street   NOTES   To Susan, for your priceless gift of love. To Kevin & Adrian Campbell, for decades of friendship and support. To my family and friends, living and deceased, you know who you are. Gratitude to The University of New Mexico, especially to Tomas Jaehn. To Portland State University: Tracy Dillon, Alexander Sager, Angela Coventry. © Joel Weishaus 2026.